Today's decision-makers are challenged by a continually evolving environment that reduces their ability to make timely and effective decisions. There is increased complexity involved when multiple agencies are responsible for the collection, analysis, and dissemination of critical information and decisions/orders. Over time, barriers were constructed to prevent the unauthorized use and dissemination of information. These barriers now add to the delay, and sometimes even block, information sharing, which makes it difficult to assimilate information and promulgate timely directives of decision makers at the appropriate level.
By Presidential Directive (NSPD-51/HSPD20), various agencies of the government are tasked to share critical information. There are many diverse agency communications infrastructures that exist with various “Common Operation Pictures” (COP), but the information transport technology does not exist among these infrastructures to support the diversity by allowing data/information/decision sharing.
One conventional technique for sharing information is a central information repository. These centralized databases enable users to log in, drop information into the repository, and retrieve information from the repository. One advantage of the central information repository is that it relieves the users from the burden of managing the shared information. However, once information has been dropped into the repository, the users often lose control over its dissemination. For confidential shared databases, the bureaucracy needed to manage and validate a large number of users can be complex.
Another conventional technique includes simple point-to-point bi-lateral information sharing agreements. However, point-to-point strategies tend to be ad-hoc, prone to mistakes, and fail to leverage information infrastructure investments from agreement to the next.